1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the area of electronic commerce over the Internet and more particularly related to an electronic method and system for tracking screen activities conducted by a user when the user enters transactions with an online business over the Internet. The screen activities are recorded in images as digital evidence that may be retrieved for verification of the transactions when a need arises.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a data communication network of interconnected computers and computer networks around the world and is rapidly evolving to the point where it combines elements of telecommunications, computing, broadcasting, publishing, commerce, and information services into a revolutionary new business infrastructure. The economy on the Internet is growing in every aspect of life, a wide range of businesses including stock trading, commodities, products, and services ordering are all via the Internet. However, the mushrooming Internet-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) offers opportunities for cyber crimes including credit card frauds, virus attacks, and irrational disputes, which could cost online businesses millions of dollars or more each year.
Many online businesses, such as www.amazon.com, require a buyer to submit electronically personalized information before any transactions take place. The personalized information including the buyer""s address and payment information (i.e. a credit card number) is provided to a merchant as to where to ship and how to charge for purchased items. The merchant however has no actual means to verify that the personalized information submitted is authenticated. For example, the credit card number could be a stolen one or the entire transaction is fraudulent. In other cases, a buyer may dispute that a purchased item that has been delivered from the merchant is not what the buyer originally selected in the transaction. Without any evidence how the buyer entered the order, the merchant often has to admit that a mistake was made on the merchant side by taking the item back and bearing all associated costs. As a result, the online transaction overhead for the merchant goes higher and the Internet economy could be potentially hampered.
There is, therefore, a great need for a generic solution that provides a merchant with an effective means to study how a transaction is engaged on the buyer""s side so that necessary steps could be taken to fairly resolve any disputes or overcome any fraudulent transactions to minimize the online transaction overhead.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above described problems and needs and has particular applications to electronic commerce over the Internet. One of the key features of the present invention is to provide a digital evidence system that can support an online business to make a justified decision or take necessary measures whenever there is a need. The digital evidence system records pertinent screen activities such as data entry into an electronic form, verification of a data transfer and a purchase order by capturing images of displayed web pages requiring interactions from the user. The captured images are transmitted back to the business and can be retrieved according to a query about any interaction by the user so that the online business could determine what has happened on the user side when a transaction was engaged with the online business.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a screen capturing module is activated to capture an image or images of displays whenever a user completes an interaction. The interaction may include data entry, verification, and viewing proof of a document. Specifically, an image of the display including the interaction by the user is captured and subsequently transmitted to the server. On the server side, a screen management system employing a digital evidence module configured to cause images of the displays to be captured manages the images and associates the images with a respective account designated to the user or a transaction identification so that it makes possible to later examine the images when there is a query about the user or the transaction.
The present invention can be implemented in numerous forms. Different implementations of the present invention yield one or more of the following advantages. One advantage of the invention is that an effective digital system is provided to online businesses to track screen activities conducted by users who engage in various transactions with the businesses so that the businesses can take necessary steps or make justified decisions when disputes or frauds arise. Another advantage of the invention is to activate the screen capturing process automatically when a user authorizes to release the user-provided data. The screen capturing process can be performed explicitly or implicitly depending on a particular implementation. Still another advantage of the present invention is the management of the screen images that need to be retrieved only when there is a need.
Accordingly one of the objects of the present inventions is to provide a digital evidence system that can be used effectively to support the online business of many kinds.
Objects and advantage together with the foregoing are attained in the exercise of the invention in the following description and resulting in the embodiments illustrated in the accompanying drawings.